


His Name on Her Lips

by appleblossomgirl



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, F/M, potent teenage pining, wish fulfillment?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 18:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleblossomgirl/pseuds/appleblossomgirl
Summary: Written for Everlark Fic Exchange Springtime 2018 event for Prompt 98: Peeta is pining for Katniss, but is about to give up because he can’t figure out a way to get her to notice him and he is being pestered to marry a merchant. He also thinks Katniss is already with Gale. Somehow, he ends up following her or he is already in the woods when Katniss shows up. Katniss, believing she is alone, pleasures herself. When she is finished, she says Peeta’s name. Of course he realizes that he needs to pursue her. [submitted by Anonymous]





	His Name on Her Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M for sexual situations. In Panem, canon divergent, takes place prior to the 74th Reaping. Possible trigger warnings are allusions to abuse, and while his intentions are pure-ish, Peeta’s actions veer a bit into Peeping Tom territory (I assume the prompt may have made that apparent). 
> 
> Incredible gratitude to @javistg and @Xerxia for hosting this event and a heaping extra scoop of thanks to @Xerxia for the betaing and free therapy. Writing hasn’t been easy for me lately and fandom events like this are so inspiring. Thank you, lovely ladies.

The first time Peeta ever came while he was awake, he was fifteen and sitting in history class. 

When he was ten, his mother had gathered him and his two teenage brothers into the laundry room to stare at a sheet with a patchwork of yellow stains. She had yelled and pointed and accused them of being filthy beasts. His brothers snuck looks of barely concealed hilarity at each other, but Peeta had no idea what was going on and was slightly terrified. At the end of the tirade she screamed at them to get out of her sight. As her youngest turned to leave the small room to trail after his brothers, she grabbed his arm and spun him to face her. 

“Promise me you’ll never do that. Promise me you’ll have some self control,” she demanded, loose wisps of her straw-colored hair escaping her severe bun in her fury.

“Do what?” he asked, afraid to know, but also hoping he could muster whatever this request required.

“Touch yourself like an animal.” She breathed in sharply through her nose and clamped her jaw so he could hear her back teeth grind together.

That seemed easy enough, he happily agreed. He was rewarded with a tight lipped smile and ruffle of his curls as he passed through the doorway. 

A few years later, he learned what a horrible mistake he had made. His body had awakened in ways he could never have anticipated. Most notably of which was his dick’s frequent hardening at the slightest provocation and its need to be touched. His mother was right, he was a filthy animal, driven to rut and rub against anything that would relieve some of this constant, dizzying yearning. 

But a promise was a promise, so he did his best to deny the urges, the demands of his own flesh. And while there were a few wet dreams, that nocturnal euphoria left him pulsing in confused release and terrified of his mother’s ire. It took all of his willpower, but he didn’t touch himself.

This became a more Herculean task when he was fifteen and Katniss Everdeen was seated in front of him in History class. For an entire hour at the end of every school day, he could stare at her, sometimes even catch the sharp scent of the mint leaves she often chewed. 

Peeta had spent untold hours staring at the ragged end of her braid as it snaked down her slight back. But this particular day, which was unseasonably warm and stuffy, they were watching a film on the ancient projector. He and Katniss sat in the row against the wall, closest to the window, so the natural light was filtering through the multitude of small tears in the curtains. Her body was angled towards the window, giving him of a view of her profile.

The heat and the incessant ticking of the projector as a spooled the film from reel to reel, the drone of the Capitol narrator cast a dream-state over the room. 

He was already half hard as he traced the column of her neck with his ravenous eyes. Her skin was dark, flushed and dewy with a light sheen of sweat. He wanted to lick the length of her neck, burrow his nose into the hollow of her throat. By the time he got to her braid, he was so hard, his cock was pushing against the fly of his pants. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a position that made him feel less cramped, but didn’t require him to move any farther from her. 

His greedy eyes traveled down the length of her braid. His fingers itched to run it between his fingers, to feel the smooth woven rope give way to the roughness of the fringe at the end. He wanted to make a paint brush out of it and watch the paint trail its mark across the paper as indelibly as she was marked across his heart. He wanted to feel the whisper of it against his overheated skin, his lips, his chest. In his imagination, he ran it up the sensitive underside of his rigid cock. The pleasure shot up the length of his dick, causing him to gasp and double over onto his desk.

Katniss twisted around her seat to investigate the sound and ended up only inches from his face. He fell headlong into the silver of her eyes as he pulsed and came and shook. He gripped the edge of the desk until he could sit up.

“You okay?” she whispered. That was the first time she had ever addressed him directly. Even through the post-orgasmic fog and creeping terror, he longed to hear his name from her lips. 

He nodded rapidly, terrified that she could see exactly what had just happened to his body all over his flushed face. She turned back around slowly and he glanced down to see the wet spot blooming across the front of his pants. Holy shit, he didn’t even know such a thing was possible. What he did know was that he had to get out of there before the bell rang and everyone else figured out what had happened. 

Shoving his pencil behind his ear, he slid his notebook off the desk and held it strategically in front of his crotch. Walking stiffly, he shuffled to where the teacher was sitting in the back of the room and said he felt ill. The teacher, obviously as undone by the heat as the rest of them, barely glanced at Peeta as he waved him away. 

As he turned to quietly ease the door closed, he caught the flash of her quicksilver eyes, felt her stare like the slash of a knife.

Rather than trying to clean up in the school bathroom, he hurried home. Once he’d made it upstairs, he changed his clothes and did his best to rinse his shorts and pants, the memory of those yellow stains on the sheet from years before making his hands shake. What would his mother think of him if she knew he’d soiled himself at school? He suspected this would be an even worse offense than the sheets had been. Would she consider it a broken promise? What would she break in return?

He lay the damp clothes out under his bed and hoped she wouldn’t notice.

As he returned downstairs to the bakery to start his shift, he couldn’t seem to keep his mind off of Katniss. He seemed incapable of being so close to her and not physically reacting. Why did she have that effect on him? He wanted to hold her and keep her safe, dote on and worship her, defile her with his unquenchable lust for her all at the same time. It made him feel deranged to want all of these things at once; to want her so badly. And he was nice. Ask anyone! He was pretty sure that no one in the entire district would call him a sex fiend. 

To settle himself, he forced his mind out of the gutter and it landed on one of his favorite fantasies, lovingly imagined so many times it had worn a deep, smooth groove in his mind. He and Katniss, married for a year or two (long enough for them to be in the same room without voraciously ripping each other’s clothes off, that was another fantasy altogether, but not his very favorite), working side by side at their own kitchen counter. She was humming absentmindedly as she prepared two cups of mint tea. He watched her contentedly as he kneaded dough for their dinner, glancing over her shoulder at the last rays of afternoon sun drenching their small garden. He closed his eyes as that intoxicating wave of warmth washed over him, what it would feel like to know she was his. 

The truth was that none of it mattered. His stomach bottomed out as he reminded himself that Katniss Everdeen didn’t know, or care, that he was alive. But the memory of her eyes watching him leave the classroom just hours before made him wonder if just maybe, she wasn’t as oblivious to him as he’d always thought. 

His father was standing in front of the pantry, rubbing the back of his neck when Peeta came downstairs the following morning. Peeta joined him, standing side by side staring at the cold cellar, and looked over at his father questioningly. They were nearly the same height now. Mellark men weren't particularly tall, and Peeta seemed to be following suit, starting to fill out horizontally through his chest and shoulders rather than gaining any more height.

His father glanced over at Peeta and whispered, “I really want some bacon for breakfast.”

Peeta nodded sympathetically as his stomach growled. Bacon sounded incredible, but Mrs. Mellark only allowed them to eat the rashers on Sunday mornings, so there was no point it dwelling on what couldn’t be. 

Peeta and his father both started when Mrs. Mellark asked loudly what they were doing staring into the pantry and why they hadn’t gotten started on breakfast. Mr. Mellark apologized to his wife and looked pensive as he glanced over his shoulder at her. 

“I was thinking of making one of those marzipan cakes that Mrs. Sprucewood enjoys so much,” he mused. 

Her sharp blue eyes shot up to his father’s face and she asked, “Do we have enough butter?”

“That’s what I was just trying to work out.” 

She licked her lips, already tasting the extra income Mrs. Sprucewood could provide. “What if you used our family’s butter ration too?” 

“That could work,” Mr. Mellark mused, “‘but what about our breakfast? How will I fry the eggs?” He looked so perplexed, Peeta wanted to kick him for overselling it.

Mrs. Mellark moved in front of him, taking a mental inventory of the cellar. “What if you fried up a rasher or two of the bacon and used the grease?” she asked as if it was her idea.

“That could work,” Mr. Mellark mused, “but what about Sunday?” 

“Well,” his mother said, a small smirk playing on her lips, “if you do your job right with the marzipan cake, we’ll have a little extra for some more bacon.”

Peeta watched incredulously as his father bopped his mother’s nose playfully, “You’re so damned clever, I knew there was a reason I married you.” 

Mrs. Mellark pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes slightly at the compliment, but instructed her husband to get started on breakfast all the same. Mr. Mellark shot Peeta a sly wink as he grabbed the bacon and danced to the stove.

Shaking his head, Peeta got started with the morning chores as the sizzle and pop of cooking bacon filled the kitchen. His father might be an evil genius.

“Oh, and have Peeta deliver the cake to the Sprucewood’s. The daughter is a year behind him in school and could make an advantageous match,” his mother called over her shoulder. 

Peeta suppressed the small thrill of fear that made his scalp prickle at his mother’s words. He’d figure out a way to explain that he was actually going to marry Katniss Everdeen as soon as figured out how to say two words to Katniss without spontaneously orgasming. 

He sat at the lunch table picking at the stale roll he’d brought for lunch. As usual, Katniss sat in the corner with Madge Undersee. Without meaning to, his eyes were drawn to her like relentless magnets. It felt like a sickness, this pointless need for her. Like his brain was impervious to the continual feedback that she didn't want him back, didn't want anything to do with him. Madness, he thought. The very definition of madness. But he stared at her anyway. He sat up straighter, reveling in the strength of her body even from across the room. He wanted to internalize that defiance, to take her into his own body so her rigid spine would support him. Fuck, he wanted her so badly, in so many ways.

He must be defective. He’s always suspected. His mother’s disdain, his brothers’ indifference, his father’s feeble love that offered no protection. But that he could love Katniss so completely and she didn’t even notice, he must be worthless. And he tried to hate her. He really, truly did. But instead he burned for her. And after awhile, he stopped fighting his devotion. It was pointless not to love her. 

By the time he turned sixteen, Peeta had given up trying to keep his promise to his mother. It was clear that she hated him regardless of whether he tortured himself by denying his base urges. He might as well take what little pleasure he could find. Though he was careful to always hide the evidence in a colored rag.

Besides, it would have been impossible to deny the riot of need that Katniss continued to inspire in him. That year, Katniss’ body had changed in ways that were impossible to ignore. Her slight frame had gently curved and swelled to perfection. And while the boys in his class couldn’t stop talking about Delly Cartwright’s colossal tits that swayed and bounced hypnotically, Peeta considered Katniss’ smaller, but shapelier breasts the absolute ideal. 

Everything about her was tantalizing, she was mouthwatering. Literally, his mouth would water when she was anywhere near him. It was a strange response, he realized. But then he started to imagine all the ways he could taste her. What would those dark red lips taste like? They were always a little chapped. Would they taste of mint? Or the skin on her neck? And he tried not to even let the thought enter his mind until he was alone or even better, in the shower, but what about her nipples? He had seen the hard points poking through her thin shirt on cold days when her sweater with its missing buttons refused to stay closed. He had to pull his own sweater down low to hide the instantaneous reaction that had sprung forth at the sight of those tight buds. What color were they? Would they taste sweet (he imagined strawberries) when he ran his tongue around the peak or sucked one into his mouth. That image was enough to send him over the edge after a stroke or two of his hand. 

One afternoon as he worked with his brothers to unload the flour sacks into the storeroom, his oldest brother made an off-handed comment about what pussies Peeta and Rye were. Rye responded with that gesture, the one where he made a V with his fingers, his tongue waggling at the juncture and for the first time Peeta realized what that vulgar symbol stood for. And because he was a depraved teenage boy, and the two things he craved most in life were food and sex, he became obsessed with the need to taste Katniss Everdeen's pussy. 

Once the idea had taken root, it was all he could think about. He spent his days adjusting himself to try to hide his perpetual hard on. He had seen pictures of naked women, but girls' bodies were so secretive. What wonders lay between those lower lips?

He pretended to be sick one day at lunch, hunching slightly and holding his stomach as he shuffled away from his friends towards the office. But veering down the hallway, he ducked into the library instead. He found the book they had used for Health Class in 6th grade and shoved it into his bag unnoticed. 

That night, as he poured over the rudimentary sketches of the female anatomy that seemed drawn for the sole purpose of confusing him and making sex unarousing, he tried to understand what fathomable wonders could lie in Katniss' underwear. 

Quickly, he lost patience with the confounding books and began to draw. 

Over the next several months he drew Katniss Everdeen incessantly. Admittedly, it started with some exceptionally risque imaginings of her naked, beckoning, pleading from the page for him to defile her in all the ways he had spent years imagining. But when he closed his eyes at night, he always saw the same image, the view of her from his seat in history class. He became an expert in the graceful curve of her neck extending up from the frayed collar of her sweater, thick braid snaking over her delicate shoulder, her daydreamy profile, chin rested on fist as her luminous gray eyes stared at the world beyond the glass, like a tethered hawk.

It was amazing how close to her he began to feel. While only a small handful of words were exchanged between them, his time spent drawing every real and imagined detail of her face, her posture, the defiant set of her shoulders made him love her more.

On a Saturday in late spring, he was just finishing the intricate piping along the edge of a cake for Rooba the butcher when he heard the two quick knocks that signaled Gale Hawthorne was at the garden door. Gale had a way of making even a knock sound like aggressive, like he was just barely restraining himself from putting his knuckles through the door. Peeta’s older brother was in the same class as Gale, and despised him. But Peeta suspected that had more to do with the fact that Rye had sullenly reported that he’d recently seen Gale and Elsa Fairborne enjoying the slag heap. 

Peeta knew that Gale had lost his father in the same mine accident that had claimed Katniss’s dad. He had watched Gale arrive at school trailed by his eerily identical younger brothers and with his tiny sister perched on his shoulders. He knew it couldn’t be easy to have to help to feed all those mouths without a business, or a legal one anyway. Despite this, Peeta could never fathom how Gale could look so chronically pissed. If Peeta got to spend his days with Katniss Everdeen, got to see the veil of wary distrust clear from her eyes when she looked at him like it did when Katniss glanced up at Gale, Peeta wouldn’t be able to force the euphoric grin off his face for anything in the world. 

Peeta’s father slid the hot tray onto the countertop and, glancing behind him to make sure that the door to the front of the bakery was closed, opened the back door. Peeta adjusted the pastry bag, squishing the icing to toward the tip, knowing he wouldn’t be able to pipe without his hands shaking when Katniss was so close. Even the sight of her left shoulder tapering down to her small hand resting against the door frame made his heart flutter. 

As usual, Gale did all of the talking during the trade, but as Peeta’s father shifted to exchange the bread for the squirrel, Peeta glanced up and caught Katniss staring right at him. He felt his pulse ratchet up to a post-sprint gallop as she held his gaze. When she looked away, he watched her cheeks darken with what must have been a blush under her olive skin. And then she and Gale were gone.

Peeta grabbed the garbage, making an excuse of needing to dump it in the bins in the back garden, though he needn’t have bothered, no one was paying attention to him anyway. He dropped the garbage bag and placed his hand directly over the spot where Katniss’s had been a moment ago, feeling for any vestiges of her warmth, certain that her touch must be seared into the wood. As he reached for the trash bag, his breath caught as he saw that one of Katniss’s gloves had fallen out of her hunting bag and was nearly hidden in the shadow of the stair. 

He grabbed it, hurrying into the garden with his treasure. Standing with his back against the smooth bark of the apple tree, he examined the glove. There was a hole in the tip of of the index finger and he ran the rough wool along his lips, a thrill running through him as he imagined her soft fingers ghosting over his lips. His father’s call to hurry in to finish the cake startled Peeta into shoving the glove down the front of his pants. Needless to say, he frosted the remainder of Rooba’s son’s birthday cake with his raging hard on pressed between the workbench and the ghost of Katniss’s hand.

He slept with the glove under his pillow, waking frequently to grope for it and reassure himself that it was still there. Grateful that he had the following morning off, he planned to sleep in a bit. But before the sun had even considered rising, the sky barely shifting to a slightly lighter shade of darkness, it occurred to him that Katniss might need this glove. That even thought it was nearly summer, the wool might serve another protective purpose against something other than the cold. Without allowing himself to reconsider, he dressed as quickly and quietly as he could before creeping down the stairs and out the garden door. 

While Peeta was intimately familiar with all manner of pre-dawn bakery endeavors, he had seldom been outside in the dark. And while he knew where the Seam was located, he’d never actually been to Katniss’s house. He knew that Katniss’s little sister had a goat and hoped that information would be enough to go on. He kept to side streets and shadows as he edged his way through town until the cobblestones gave way to the rutted dirt roads of the Seam. There was just enough moonlight for him to make out houses and he kept the impenetrably dark mass of the forest looming up to the west. Winding his way through the unfamiliar narrow pathways of the Seam, he stopped every 50 feet or so and listened. But it was actually the smell, a warm scent of bedstraw and livestock wafting over the acrid smell of coal smoke that permeated the early morning air. He followed his nose.

Once he’d found her house, he planned to leave the glove hanging over the porch railing where she would be sure to see it. But as he approached the porch, a candle flared to life just inside. Peeta stepped back into the shadows of an adjacent house when he saw her through the window. He’d imagined this scene a million times and couldn’t believe he had been given the gift of seeing her, illuminated by candlelight, moving about her home.

He watched her. Like he always had. But not like others did, or at least not for the same reason. They wanted something from her, wanted to possess a piece of her, consume her beauty like a decadent cake gobbled up in huge, messy bites. He just wanted to be beside her.

For as long as he could remember, his deepest wish had been to be on the same side of the door as her. Not for lecherous reasons, though he wasn't immune to the lust she inspired, but sexual desire was not his chief motivation. It just boiled down to an overwhelming feeling that he belonged in there. With her.

Sometimes he actually felt resentful that she was so stunning, because that one fact, the geometry of her delicate features in such a pleasing arrangement, reduced his certainty that they belonged together to something common. But in his heart, he knew this was something more, something greater. Something true. 

Seeing her like that stirred something in him. Stirred. Like a tsunami in a snow globe. More like it had twisted his soul into a new shape. This is where language failed him. He didn't know words strong enough to accurately represent this certainty that they were meant to be together. Even more perplexing, it appeared that she did not understand this, did not know it in the same sure way he did. But acknowledging that this sentiment could be one sided sent this entire enterprise into stalker territory and it was too pure and magical for anything as coarse and mundane as stalking.

Realizing that the fact that he was pressed against her neighbor’s house watching her through the window was difficult to construe as anything other than stalking, he took a step forward to return her glove as he had intended. But just then, the candle winked out and Katniss appeared seconds later in the doorway. His breath caught as watched her move silently and swiftly across the road and into the meadow. 

He looked up into sky, which moments ago had been a dark bowl flecked with stars, but had since lightened enough for him to see Katniss’s movement through the grass. He took a deep breath and plunged into the meadow in her wake. 

By the time he saw her silhouette slip under the fence, he felt powerless against following her. He struggled under the fence and crawled about fifteen feet to a patch of thick underbrush. He was outside the fence. He was sweating profusely and his heart felt like it was trying to jackhammer it’s way out of his chest. Glancing around wildly, he realized with a blinding flash of panic that he had lost Katniss. He could see the fence in the early dawn light and was just about to crawl back to it when he heard a small scraping noise up to the left. 

He had seconds to decide whether to retreat home like the coward he was or find the courage to follow her into the unknown. He knew Katniss could never be with a man who didn’t possess the bravery necessary to face the forest. He swallowed down the fear and hurtled himself into the world of nightmares. 

He spent the next few hours with his blood fizzing with barely contained terror as he repeatedly lost her in the forest. He had thought that the sun rising would be his salvation, that once he could see the threats that surrounded him that he’d feel less frightened. But he quickly discovered that it never got light in the forest, just less dark with more shadows. When the fear of being lost and seconds away from being devoured by some rabid creature overwhelmed him, he’d hear a distant explosion of frantic wing beats or a dull thud of what he could only imagine was an arrow hitting wood and he’d stagger blindly towards it. 

Despite that he’d never been so petrified in his life, he couldn’t deny that the world beyond the fence was magical. The enormity of the trees, the morning sun illuminating the leaves like stained glass, the air so crisp and clean that his lungs ached. The green was so vibrant he could smell it, some sort of ancient fragrance that simultaneously soothed and frightened him. 

It had been ages since he last heard Katniss when he noticed he was shaking and there were little arcs of light obscuring the edges of his vision. He honestly had no idea how long he’d been in the forest, it was eerily timeless. He forced his mind to focus on the rays of light slanting through the trees at a steep angle and wildly guessed it must be just before or after noon. He hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since dinner the night before. He was starving and queasy at the same time. 

Closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, he forced himself to listen. He didn’t hear anything and was starting to panic in earnest again, when his addled brain deciphered a familiar sound, running water. His swollen tongue throbbed at the promise of something to drink and he followed the sound and gratefully noticed the transition of pine needles to mud under his feet as he stumbled towards it.

When the underbrush opened into a small pond fed by a trickling forest stream, he fell to his knees in relief. Cupping his shaking hands he gulped down about a gallon of water until his thirst abated. He rolled over into a patch of moss and scooched under an overhang of berry brambles. Despite the fact that he needed to be back at the bakery any minute and that he’d likely die out here, he gave into the security of the mossy den, cooler and softer than his sweetest dream of a bed, and drifted off. 

When he awoke what felt like seconds later, he was on high alert, instinct forcing him into complete stillness while his senses took inventory. There was a small splash to his right and he rolled carefully onto his stomach and scanned the pond. And there she was, floating on her back in the pond like a wood nymph. He dug his fingers into the ground and he blinked several times to clear his vision in a bid to convince himself this was real. He was just about to call out to her when she flipped over and dove under water, the long expanse of her bare legs trailing behind her. He swallowed hard and glanced over to see her pants and the leather jacket she always wore hanging over a nearby rock. 

He watched in helpless indecision as she emerged from under the water surface and pulled herself up on the mossy bank. She was wearing a sodden undershirt and dripping pair of underwear that, despite their drab color, stood out starkly against her olive skin and left little to his rampant imagination. He couldn’t help noticing the dark ring of her areola through the translucent fabric.

His eyes traced the column of her slender leg up to the slight swell of her ass, he watched in awe as she leaned down and slid the wet fabric off over her left, then right foot before standing and whipping the wet undershirt over her head. He swallowed thickly as he watched a naked Katniss Everdeen squeeze out and lay her underwear over the same boulder that held her pants. 

She wrung out her dripping mass of dark hair before walking over to a patch of moss illuminated by an ethereal sunbeam breaking through the canopy. She laid down no more than fifteen feet from his warren, a mosaic of leaf shade dappled with sunlight shimmered across her body.

He felt lightheaded as he took in the dangerously erotic sight of the expanse of her gorgeous body glittering with water droplets like diamond facets in the sun. He tried to break her into sections to dull the impact of his wildest fantasy appearing like a gift before him. He took in the small swells of her breasts tipped with dark rose-colored peaks. He watched the droplets run down the gentle slope of her stomach to pool in her navel. 

He knew he should be ashamed, that watching her like this was a violation. But she looked so natural, so perfectly right laying naked and glowing in the forest like the woodland faeries he’d read about as a child. Maybe it was just the all-encompassing awe in the face of her beauty, but he couldn’t seem to muster any shame. She was a living piece of art. 

Just when he began to suspect she’d fallen asleep, she reached up and scratched her neck. He was transfixed by the way the movement of her arm caused a slight bounce of her breasts. He watched in dry-mouthed astonishment as she ran her finger tips down over the gentle swell, bringing her other hand up to palm her other breast. 

She ran her fingers around her nipples until they were as stiff as raspberry gumdrops and just as mouthwatering. Swallowing hard, he followed her left hand as slid down her slightly concave stomach to push between her legs, one knee falling to the side to make room for the circular movement of her fingertips. 

With a mix of trepidation and wonderment, he realized what was happening. His cock, already rock hard, had apparently figured it out before his brain. One of his wildest fantasies was playing out before his eyes. As if his desire had been so fervent, so potent, he had brought this magical dream into reality. Or maybe he was still dreaming and he’d wake up with a wet spot decorating the front of his pants. He decided not to care, refocusing his attention on the exquisite impossibility of seeing Katniss pleasure herself. 

Her breathing had accelerated, her lips were slightly parted as the speed of her fingers increased. He’d never been so aroused in his life, which given his lush inner landscape, was saying something. When Katniss pulled her other leg up allowing her knees to butterfly out to the sides and her back to arch off the ground, he couldn’t stop his body from rocking forward. The give of the groundcover and soft soil allowed the tip of his dick to slide out of the waistband of his pants. He bit down hard on his lip to keep from groaning at the sensation of the soft, cool moss replacing the feel of rough fabric on his aching cock. He could already feel his body straining to come, but he refused to allow his own need to cause him to miss even a second of this. So he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes to center himself. 

The breeze shifted and he caught the scent of her. His eyes shot open and for one dizzying second every muscle in this body clenched in an animalistic need to possess her, to bury himself in the body of the girl he wanted more than anything. He wanted nothing more than to find a home in the cradle of her strong thighs, his head pillowed on her sporadically clenching stomach. To close his eyes and rest there forever against the warmth of her skin. 

He pressed his flaming face in the fallen leaves and took slow deep breaths of the damp earth to steady himself. As desperate as he was for this to never end, his heart was beating so frantically that feared it might give out. She was driving him to the brink of sanity.

The small sound of Katniss’s gasp whipped his head up. Blinking away the tears swimming in his eyes, he watched her legs tremble, her feet planted and her stomach clenching hard, the gentle circling of her fingers having given way to frantic rubbing. 

He fixed every detail in his mind, her long toes digging into the soft ground, the mole just below her right breast, the ropy strands of her midnight hair fanned out around her head, the dark flush of her chest and the graceful arch of her neck. It was the most staggeringly beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

When her pleasure peaked, he was staring at her mouth, the glistening red of her parted lips. His body was strung tighter than a bow string, and her couldn’t take his eyes off of her. If he hadn’t seen it in addition to hearing it, he never would have believed it. As she came, she gasped one magical word: “Peeta.” The hoarse, whispered cry sent him careening over the edge, like his name on her lips commanded his body’s pleasure. He surged forward, digging his fingers into the soil as he rocked with the force of his orgasm. His chest heaved with the effort to stay silent, his entire body quaking with bliss.

As he came back to himself, he watched Katniss collapse in a boneless puddle, her delicate nostrils flaring with her ragged breaths. In that moment, he wanted her more than he thought possible. His chest cracked opened with the need to lose himself in her endless gray eyes, to gently caress her face, to lace his fingers through hers. He’d never wanted anything more than he wanted to belong to her in that moment. 

But as usual, she didn’t even know he was there. 

Katniss got up and crouched by the pond. She rinsed her hands and splashed a handful of water to rinse between her legs. For a second, Peeta swore she looked right at him, his heart leapt to his throat. Instead she stood abruptly, glanced over her shoulder and strode quickly to the rock and began to dress in her damp clothes. Each piece of fabric that stole a piece of skin from his vision was a travesty (a knife in his heart). He was losing her piece by piece. 

Turning to pick up her hunting bag and bow which had been tucked behind the far side of the rock out of his line of sight, Katniss took one last look around the clearing before cinching her satchel over her shoulder and silently disappearing into the forest. 

Peeta tentatively placed his palm on the softly undulating surface of the pond, trying to feel the ghost of a connection through the waves that she had set in motion. Even though a voice in his head was screaming at him to follow Katniss out of forest, he knew that if she discovered him, she would consider his voyeurism, however accidental, a violation. He’d sooner be eaten by bears than inspire any semblance of shame or embarrassment in her mercury eyes. 

He stood, swaying slightly from lightheadedness, unsure if it was from hunger or the emotional exhaustion of having one of his wildest fantasies fulfilled. He tucked himself back into his pants and rinsed the soiled hem of his shirt before setting off for home. Somehow, he found his way back to the fence line in what seemed like about half the time.

Walking across the meadow, Peeta felt like a different person. The gnawing hunger and shimmery exhaustion couldn’t touch him. Even the promise of his mother’s fury at him for arriving so late for his afternoon shift rolled off his mind like rain from an oil cloth. With those two breathy syllables, Katniss had reordered Peeta’s world. If she had thought of him in a moment like that, even by accident, there was hope for the future he’d always dreamed of. 

Pulling her glove from deep within his pocket, he couldn’t believe it had only been a handful of hours since he’d left his bed to return it to her. For one brief moment, he held her glove like he was holding her hand, then he placed it on the top step of her porch and turned towards the bakery. 

Peeta could feel his certainty retreating with every step he took toward town. He summoned the echo of her soft cry of his name like a revelation. He knew that whatever came next he would follow Katniss Everdeen anywhere, no matter where fate led them, they would go there together if she would allow it.


End file.
